page_title: Bablake School
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Bablake School / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Bablake School. Main school building in the centre, with the English, Drama and Music block and the Language block to the right of photo; Sixth Form block and Science Quadrant to the left.
context_page_description: Bablake School is a co-educational independent school located in Coventry, England and founded in 1344 by Isabella of France, widow of Edward II, making it one of the oldest schools in the United Kingdom. Bablake is part of the Coventry School Foundation, a registered charity, along with King Henry VIII School, King Henry VIII Preparatory School and Cheshunt School. The current headmaster is Andrew Wright, who succeeded Mr John Watson following his move to Leicester Grammar School in 2019. Today Bablake is a selective, fee-paying independent school and a member of the HMC.
context_section_description: Started by Edward II's widow Queen Isabella in 1344, Bablake (or Babbelak in Middle English) was a public school first sited at Hill Street in  Coventry. Isabella endowed the Guild of St John with the Babbelak land on which was founded the St John's chapel and the Bablake school linked to it. Bablake church, now known as St John's, still stands adjacent to the school's original buildings. The school still holds concerts in the church, and has even sung Evensong there once. Many of the pupils were originally choristers of the church. The relationship continued through the figure of Edward Jackson, who from 1734 was both vicar of the church and headmaster of the school. The expansion of the Bablake site continued throughout the 14th century with the aid of further land granted by the Black Prince. In 1563 the school's principal benefactor, Thomas Wheatley, who had been mayor of Coventry in 1556, endowed it with much of his estate.
  Wheatley had ordered some steel wedges from Spain. In their place, he received by mistake a chest of silver ingots. Unable to discover to whom this cargo rightly belonged, Wheatley decided to bestow it upon the school. In 1833 a new schoolroom (now the headquarters of the Coventry School Former Pupils’ Association) and a house for the master were added. Two years later, after much mismanagement and extravagant spending, administration of the charities was removed from the Corporation, and Bablake came under the control of the General Charity Trustees. At this time there were twenty boys in the school. In 1855 this number increased to seventy. Even under the great F. W. Humberstone, who took over as headmaster in 1870, Bablake boys were largely confined to the premises and a most monotonous routine. Shortly after this Bablake expanded rapidly, incorporating three other local schools: Baker, Billing and Crow's School (Black Gift), Katherine Bayley's Charity School (Blue Gift) and Fairfax Charity School (Green Gift) These, along with Wheatley, comprised the school's six principal benefactors, and gave their names to its six houses thereafter. In the 1890s, Bablake began to move to its current site in Coundon Road, where it continued as a public school with six all-boys boarding houses.
  In the 1930s fifty acres of land on Hollyfast Road were purchased to expand the playing fields of the school. During the war, the school was evacuated to Lincoln. In the 1970s the first female pupil was admitted. The school had long ceased taking boarders; what had been the bedrooms became the Mathematics department, and the headmaster's house became the Geography department. In the late 1980s the school built its Modern Languages block; a few years later Bablake Junior School opened and in 2000 the English, Drama and Music block was completed, sited on what was originally the headmaster's garden.
caption: Main school building in the centre, with the English, Drama and Music block and the Language block to the right of the photo; Sixth Form block and Science Quadrant to the left
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